


No Good Story Ever Started With...

by becisvolatile



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Multi, Short fic collection, implied dubious consent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 23:06:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4324260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becisvolatile/pseuds/becisvolatile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A final destination for all my prompt fills and drabbles. All the pairs, some of the feels, a little of the smuts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. MK1 Eyeball

“Ugh. Dad.  _No_. I don’t want to talk abou-”

“Oh, kid, you can bet your ass we’re going to talk about it. You’re lucky I haven’t come to get you the Hell out of there.”

Darcy looked heavenward, away from the open Skype video chat on her laptop, and groaned. “I am an  _adult_.”

“Then you’re old enough to know better.”

“Dad! It was a bus full of  _preschool_  children. Under a bridge.”

Scott Summers simply waved aside her justification and held up a tablet to the camera. “Do you know what this is?”

Darcy leaned in and squinted, “A first gen iPad. You need to upgrade.”

Those who had the pleasure of knowing her father at his day job were well aware that he had a pretty killer stare, the little-known fact was that even with his heavily tinted ruby quartz glasses, he still managed to pull off a  _devastating_  Disappointed Dad™ expression. No mean feat considering he rarely uncovered his eyes.

“It’s a news article,” he continued, much in the same vein that he conducted almost every Tuesday night chat with his daughter.

“You mean ‘crackpot mutant spotting blog’ with a readership of three people, one of them being you.”

“A news article with eyewitness accounts claiming that a young woman helped to blast away debris from a bus wreck. By shooting lasers from her eyes.”

“ _Always with the lasers_ ,” Darcy muttered darkly as she tapped her fingernail against the frame of her glasses. “I wrapped my scarf around my face,” Darcy said more loudly, for her father’s benefit.

Scott Summers hadn’t started out as a good father. Or much of a father at all. Darcy couldn’t blame him, he’d been nineteen when he’d been saddled with his ‘freak bastard’ of a daughter. As for her mother… one exceedingly awkward conversation with her father had revealed that despite his best efforts to narrow down the field, he had no idea who she was either. He’d grown into parenthood around about the time Darcy had grown out of needing a parent. As it stood they uneasily indulged each other, Scott letting Darcy leave the institute against his every instinct and Darcy giving him some illusion of parental control. It worked for them. Mostly.

“Darcy, I let you leave the institute for college on three provisos. What were they?”

“ _Every freakin’ week_ ,” Darcy screwed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose as she recited the list. “No using my mutation. No coming out of the mutant closet.”

“And?”

“No premarital sex.”

“Exactly.”

Darcy gave a vague nod. “My good man Meatloaf said it best: Two out of three ain’t bad.”

A muscle in his jaw ticked furiously.

“Aw, c’mon Dad, don’t you want to know which two?”

Behind her father’s chair a pair of loose denim-clad hips swaggered past. 

“Is that Uncle Logan? LOGAAAN! Yo!”

The man in question moved back into the frame and dropped down to give Darcy a warm smile and single nod. “‘Sup bub?”

“When are you coming to visit me? I’m legal now.” Darcy leered at the camera and waggled her eyebrows. 

Logan took a long draw out of a beer bottle and chuckled. “Like my nuts unroasted, kid,” he said with a nod to her father.

“Your loss!” Darcy called out as he moved off again.

“Well, I guess we’ll never know, will we?” her dad snapped waspishly. “Look, Darcy, I didn’t lose it when you got yourself tied up with actual  _aliens_. Or when - even worse - you got into SHIELD’s nightmare of a conga line. Or even when you shacked up with Stark’s train-wreck of an organization…”

“I think they call themselves ‘The Avengers’? Now,  _them_  you probably did see on the news.”

“And you think they’d be happy to find out what you are? Every one of them is a self-made phenomenon. You think they’ll understand what it means to be  _born_  like us? To not just be natural, but  _supernatural_?”

“Whoa, Dad. Have you been reading Magneto’s pamphlet drops again?”

She felt almost guilty when his shoulders slumped and he spoke in a quiet voice. “Honey, I’m just asking you to dial it back. That’s all…”

~*~

Despite having  _every_  intention of doing just that, things didn’t exactly go to plan. Wasn’t there a saying that good intentions paved the path to… an underground concrete bunker?

And  _God_  the place was so fucking creepy. Darcy had inherited a much more graceful version of her father’s own optic blast, her mutation was fully voluntary (with the odd emotion-driven exception). Her glasses all held a panel of compressed silica nanofibres and with just a tilt of the head she could angle her blasts through the panels, which concentrated the energy and made it a helluva lot more damaging. Not that her Dad had any clue that Xavier had hooked her up with the lenses, he’d simply thought they were a more cosmetically-pleasing version of his own inhibiting sunglasses. More than just what she’d inherited, Darcy had grown with the ability to see just about any waveform known to man and probably some she couldn’t yet identify. Of course four year old Darcy had simply thought it normal to be able to see conversation happening two rooms away, or to enter a room and still see an impression of something that had happened there hours prior.

“Look,” Darcy said as she danced from toe to toe in the the bunker, trying to skirt around what appeared - to her eyes, at least - to be a drainage hole in the centre of the room surrounded by the remnants of a  _lot_  of blood. “I don’t want to freak you out or anything, but we have got to get out of this room.”

Steve, who’d had the great misfortune to be the only person chivalrous enough to charge into a certain trap to save her - she  _hated_  when they used her as bait - took a moment away from inspecting the hefty steel door that held them captive and fixed her with an expression she’d once seen him use on a small child lost at the mall. “Darcy, I know you’re probably scared.”

“I am not sc-” Well, actually, she  _was_. But only because she could see that they were standing in the middle of what could well be a killing floor. “I just have a  _really strong_  gut feeling that we need to get gone.”

He stood a little straighter then, tugged back the cowl of his uniform and pinned her with a hard stare. “Your gut instincts are usually pretty damn prophetic.”

“Correct,” Darcy nodded wildly, wanting him to understand something she couldn’t voice, “Which is why we need to  _leave_.”

“I can’t bust through that door, Darce, and we only have my shield. I just don’t see how…”

“But I do. I can see a way.” About three feet from the door the wall was less dense, there was a weak point where it had been poorly repaired and patched with a poor quality concrete. Darcy was relatively certain she’d be able to blast through it.

Steve, God Bless him, simply looked at her like maybe he was finally realising that she had brought something to the table. “What do you need?”

“I can…” Darcy was at a loss as to how to explain it. “I can do a thing, but there will be a blast. I might have a… skill.” _Be a mutant_. “But I am still very  _very_  soft and squishy and debris ricochet in this bunker will be a  _bitch_.”

Darcy nails ‘tinked’ neatly against Steve’s shield as she manoeuvred him and it back into the corner furthest from the weak point. She turned with her back to him and pointed to it. “There. We can bust it there.”

With a firm nod Steve reached out and gripped her hip with one hand, pulling her back against his front. If Darcy had had a spare moment she might have spent it thinking about how nicely she fit against his front, but alas, she had  _srs bzniz_  to get to. She dropped into a low squat and Steve moved with her, his arm came up around her bringing his shield up so that she was safely cocooned between his body and the shield. It wasn’t ideal, so much of his bulk was left uncovered, but they were fast running out of time.

“Close your eyes,” she ordered.

“And miss this? Never.”

Darcy rolled her eyes, he’d shut his eyes soon enough. The optic blasts were too bright for normal eyes to tolerate for long and she figured the serum would take care of any residual flash burns to his eyes. She wriggled down into her squat a little further as she gripped the edge of his shield and peeked over it. The fingers of her right hand gripped and tipped her glasses, while her index fingertip slipped up to press against her temple. For just the few seconds that she unleashed the optic power a great pressure behind her eyes eased and she let out a breathy little sigh of relief.

It didn’t last for long, sound exploded around them and relief turned to fear as great chunks of concrete began to explode from the wall and rush at them, hurtling around the tight space. Darcy’s small frame shook but she held still, focussing on the growing weak point. A golf ball sized-chunk of concrete clipped her cheek, but still she didn’t shut her eyes. It went against every instinct of self-preservation that she had, but she held firm and continued to until she had carved out a small crawl-hole. Steve’s free arm had snaked around her waist and he held her close, murmuring unintelligible words of encouragement in her ear as he protected her body with his own.

Then with the  _literal_  blink of an eye it was over. Darcy fell back against Steve’s thighs, one hand shakily readjusting her glasses on her nose as they both surveyed the decent-sized hole she’d made in the concrete wall.

She tilted her head up as Steve dropped his face and regarded her with open-mouthed amazement. “W-what… can I ask what-”

“I was born like this.”

“Like Wanda.” Steve was remarkably good at making connections.

“Like Wanda,” Darcy nodded as they both scrambled to their feet. “But less pant-wettingly terrifying.”

Steve took a second to brush some dust from his shield as he muttered, “Thought the mechanical octopus was the strangest thing I’d see this week.”

“You think you’re having a bad week?” Darcy asked with a crooked grin. “Just wait until I have to call my dad and tell him I broke all three of his rules. Usually I only break one a week.”

“Rules?” They dropped to their hands and knees to scramble through the hole, Steve went first carefully avoiding the rough edges as he passed.

“You know: don’t use my mutations, don’t let people know about my mutations.” Darcy spoke to his ass as he crawled ahead of her.

“And the third rule?” Steve asked as he cleared the gap and stood up, turning back to offer her his hand.

Darcy let him wrap his long, strong fingers around her own. “I’ll show you later, but right now we should probably run.”


	2. One. Two. Three.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gonna teach her to dance. Get her in my arms. Make her swoon...

“Doll, that was my foot.”

“Suck it up. You’re a super soldier, you can take it.”

Steve, with his heightened hearing, was pretty sure he heard Bucky mutter something like ‘ _Not for much longer…_ ’ as he stepped into the gym and spied Darcy and Bucky dancing. 

Well, not  _entirely_. Bucky was doing his best to move through a passable East Coast Swing, while Darcy - flushed, sweaty and with hair frizzing out of place - was stomping her way through what could have been the Nutbush. It was hard to tell. She looked less like the breathless, romanced, softened woman that Bucky had described the previous day when he’d outlined his plans -  _Gonna teach her to dance. Get her in my arms. Make her swoon_  - and a lot more like Tony after an eighteen hour bender in the lab.

Her sneakers had been kicked aside and she danced only in lime green socks, one already slipping loose from her left foot. Bucky reached for her hip, only to have his hand smacked away crankily as she resolutely plodded through the steps of the dance (or some semblance thereof).

“That was a nine count,” Bucky noted, not quite able to mask his frustration. “It’s a six count.”

“I’m  _doing_  a six count!”

“…five, six, seven, ei - you  _just_  it again. You can count can’t you? It’s  _slow, slow, quick, qui_ -”

Steve watched as Darcy pulled her hand back. Damn near looked like she was about to take a swing at Bucky. He sighed. Poor Bucky. Turned out that old-time moves didn’t always snare modern day women. 

He didn’t waste any time in making himself known as he quickly jogged across the floor and caught Darcy’s hand on the back-swing. His long fingers slipping over her tight little fist as he drew her back and away from Bucky. “Better idea!” he announced affably as the irritated pair were separated. “Slow time waltz. Much more beginner friendly. It’s how I learned.”

Over Darcy’s head he caught Bucky’s eye and wondered if he too was remembering a sun-drenched afternoon spent bumbling around a small kitchenette as the radio stuttered out a slow and sunny tune and Bucky - the far better dancer - had dragged his slight, clumsy frame through the steps time and again. Bucky’s thin-pressed lips relaxed into a small and thankful smile. 

Steve toed off his joggers and stooped to peel off his gym socks. Then he stood at his full height and settled his hands gently on Darcy’s shoulders. “You and me, Darce. We’re Bucky’s gal for the dance. Get up on my feet.”

Darcy turned her head to look at him, eyebrows snapped together as she chewed on her lip. 

“C’mon,” he coaxed, “Back to my chest. Feet on top of mine.”

There was another brief moment of hesitation so Steve simply reached out and grabbed her hips, lifting her until she was settled against his front, the curve of her bottom brushing against his hard thighs, her shoulders back against his ribs and her soft green socks ending nearly an inch before his long toes. He kept his hands on her hips, steadying her as she shifted uneasily. “I’m heavy,” she apologized immediately, swaying a little on the uneven terrain of his feet. “I had a huge lunch and-” 

“Darcy,” this from Bucky, “He was on the early news last week lifting a Quinjet. You’re good.” But just to help her feel stable, Bucky stepped up to her front and lifted her arms to his shoulders. Both men pressed their bodies in tight, keeping her balanced and in place as they joined hands on one side and Bucky slipped his hand over and around Steve’s ribs, bringing it up to rest over his shoulder blade. His fingers drummed there for just a moment as the three settled into their oddly comfortable places. She settled a little more firmly onto his feet, toes wriggling in her socks as he rested his chin on the top of her head and shared a crooked grin with Bucky at their joint fortune in having a heated, sweet bundle of woman pressed between them. Two breaths passed as the men caught a shared song in their heads. It cracked with static and warmth, played out in the joint imagining of sunlight and a greying linoleum floor… Bucky leaned in just moments before they started and -

“Wait!” Darcy cried and Steve paused, right foot lifted to step back as Bucky led. “What’s the timing for a waltz?”

“It’s a three count,” Bucky said, smile playing about his lips.

“Three?” Darcy gave a firm little nod. “Good number,” she announced as they began the dance.


	3. Wield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I never wanted to be a blonde..."

“I never wanted to be a blonde,” Darcy Lewis said softly as she wrapped the silken skein of white gold hair around her fingers. She released the hair -  _her hair_ \- and stared, both mesmerised and horrified, as the platinum gossamer strands slipped and snaked softly, coming to rest against her shoulder. It wasn’t her biggest concern, but of the many dramas she was facing at least the hair seemed manageable.

She hugged her knees to her chest and frowned down at her Strawberry Margarita pink toenails. Thor shifted next to her on the sofa, his weight bowing the cushions and causing her to bump her elbow against his forearm. “It’s just a mistake,” Darcy said as she dropped one foot to toe Mjolnir aside - as if having it out of sight meant that it hadn’t just put a considerable crimp in  _both_  their foreseeable futures. “We’ll fix it.”

Thor gave a tight-lipped smile and grabbed her nearest foot in his massive hand, giving it a gentle and comforting squeeze. “Mjolnir is an ancient and arcane relic of untold power and wisdom, perhaps the only mistake was that it did not choose you upon first descending to Midgard.”

“This is such a load of-”

“Do not doubt the wisdom of Mjolnir, sweet Darcy, it has a way of seeing the true worth of a man -  _or woman_  - when they can least see it themselves. I am honoured-” Thor’s voice faltered and suddenly he seemed more the ancient being that he was, “I am  _honoured_  to have held it in safekeeping for you.”

Darcy leaned forward to stare at Mjolnir, her newly-grown hair swinging in a luxuriant, irritating, curtain around her face. “Why’d it have to be me, myeuh-muh?” she whispered before the first tears started to spill down her face and Thor hauled her against his chest as she began to cry in earnest.


	4. Untitled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony can't lie. It's one of the things Pepper loves about him.

"...and you're sure?" Pepper Potts has to ask the question, even with a folder full of supporting evidence before her. She's met people like this before, even gone _looking_ herself, but none have the array of evidence that the young brunette in front of her has provided. Not that Pepper needs any more than to look at her, Darcy Lewis took after her father in so many ways.

But for all her bravado and carefully crafted nonchalance, Darcy is shifting uncomfortably on the white leather sofa as she watches Pepper, waiting for some sort of response.

"I-I need to tell Tony," Pepper murmurs as she shuts the file and passes her fingers over the attached image of Darcy, taken just days after her birth.

Darcy blinks, then give a one shouldered shrug. "Yeah, I mean... If you think it's..."

"I just need to be the one to tell him."

"Sure thing."

~*~

Tony finds the folder while Pepper is off-site at an outlying R and D facility. He has the vague notion of her finding him bare-arsed naked on her desk... a little bit of fun.

Only his 'little bit of fun' winds up with him gaining a kid in the space of four minutes. It's not the worst thing that's ever happened to him, but he's blindsided. He slips the photo from the folder, eyes glancing over the insignia of an adoption agency he's encountered during previous (unsuccessful) paternity suits, and an hour later he's sliding it across the bar to Rhodey.

"I got a kid," he says and he's not even sure if it's a bad thing, but suddenly he's wondering if she's a smoker. Or if she drinks. _Christ, is she even old enough to drink?_

"Uh, this photo it's... late eighties? Does Pepper..."

"I think she'd hiding it... waiting to break it to me or... does she need a car?"

"Pepper?" Rhodey frowns over his beer.

" _The kid_. She's probably old enough to drive. What's safety like with Maserati these days? No don't answer. Stark Industries can do better."

"You don't make cars."

"We do now."

~*~

Tony can't lie. It's one of the things Pepper loves about him. He can skirt the truth, but that more than anything gives him away. It had been a slip-up leaving the folder on her desk, but Darcy had left her reeling. Some revelations hit too close to home and Pepper had been feeling a little overwhelmed.

"Since when do you build commercial cars?" Pepper asked, eyes lifting from her glass of wine as Tony lies sprawled on the floor amidst a swath of technical papers.

"Since today."

"Her name's Darcy Lewis," Pepper cuts to the point and Tony looks up guiltily. "She's 23, Culver grad."

He sits up on his heels and nods, "I'm sorry?" But it's a question, like he's not sure if he _is_ sorry. It's not like Tony to be apologetic about snooping. 

Pepper narrows her eyes and takes another sip of her wine.

"What's she like?" Tony asks quietly.

"Beautiful, seems smart. Rolls her eyes too much."

"She hates me." This _should_ sound like a question, but it doesn't.

"Tony, I don't think you-"

"I mean she has every right-"

"Tony." Pepper tries to cut him off but he's already on a roll.

"I was careless and stupid and I didn't think-"

" _Tony._ "

He stops, loos up and it's Pepper's turn to look away as she speaks. "She's _mine_." 

A few beats pass as Tony crawls across the carpet, then crouches low beside Pepper's knees.

"I was sixteen, Tony." 

He grabs her wine and sets it aside before wrapping her hands in his... "You okay?"

Pepper shrugs and he drags her down onto his lap and wraps his arms around her.

"Want to blind her with material possessions until she has no choice but to love us?"

" _God yes_ ," Pepper nods as Tony turns back to his car plans and she reaches for her Starkpad with every intention of spending up big on Net-A-Porter.


	5. A Penny Saved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There are four ingredients and none of them involve this many carrots."

“There are four ingredients, and none of them involve this many carrots,” Darcy threw her arms up in dismay as she eyed the precariously stacked mountain of juicing carrots.

“But they were on sale,” he defended and, while nobody but Bucky would ever believe her, the truth of it was: Captain American could be a damn whiney boyfriend when he wanted to be.

It wasn’t his fault, not really. He was a man with a personal economic policy still firmly entrenched in post-depression America. Steve Rogers could barely contain his gag reflex when he caught her paying more than three dollars for a cup of coffee (There’s only two types of coffee, Darcy: black or white). Christ, she had caught him trying to darn his socks just the previous week. The week before that he’d used the ends of a loaf of bread in a custard pudding jammed with raisins that he’d stolen out of the trail mix she took to work. In all fairness, it had been delicious. But she’d go to her grave decrying him as the worst sort of scrooge for making it.

She still couldn’t bear to think about his ‘nose to tail’ approach to meat. Steve and Bucky would gather every Thursday for Lamb’s Fry Night while she’d gasp her way through the apartment trying to light a battalion of Yankee Candles and flapping her pretty afghan throw out of the window to try and get the smell of roadkill out of it - all while the boys moaned their delight about the ‘damn fine meal’. Ack.

And while a man with a firm handle on his finances was sexy, watching him trying to grate carrots into her Bolognese sauce was decidedly not.

“I’m putting my foot down about the carrots,” Darcy announced to his broad back as he worked over the the cutting board, carrot and grater in hand.

“You put your foot down a lot in the kitchen,” Steve observed brightly as he continued with the carrot.

“Last time I caught you saving potato peels to make into a sandwich!”

“S’gonna fry them first,” he mumbled to the carrot in his hand.

Darcy let out a frustrated little growl and stepped up to wrap her arms around his waist. “I know everyone should watch their money,” Darcy said softly as she rested her forehead against his spine. “But are you that worried?”

Steve set down the grater and carrot stub and turned to prop his butt against the counter as he wrapped his around around Darcy’s shoulders. “Saving for something.”

“Rainy day?” Darcy asked.

“Wedding ring, actually.”

The dark grey of his sweatshirt blurred a little before her eyes and it took her a few moments to blink away her confusion before she looked up at him. “Huh?”

“If you want it, that is.”

“Honestly?” she said as she mentally resigned herself to a life of offal-scented Thursdays. “You could wrap a potato peel around my finger and I’d be happy.”

“Good to know.”

“I’m lying.” Darcy quickly amended. “I still want a ring.”

“We’ll see.”


	6. Please

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s standing at her door, rain-soaked and shaking with it. His lips are pressed into a hard line as he jabs one locked stiff metal index finger at her face.
> 
> “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky x Natasha, alludes to past underaged sex and dubious consent.

He’s standing at her door, rain-soaked and shaking with it. His lips are pressed into a hard line as he jabs one locked stiff metal index finger at her face.

“I _know._ ”

“You hid it well,” Natasha isn't giving here. She’s due out for Johannesburg in four hours, fatigue is forming shadows in her periphery and she _needs_ those few sweet sour hours in her bed if she’s going to keep herself alive out there. If she’s going to keep _anyone_ alive out there.

“I mean I _remember._ ”

“Which part?”

 His hand drops to his side. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” 

That’s new. The request shows her, more than anything else, that he’s remembering who he was _before._ It must be nice to have been someone once. She turns on her heel and walks back into her apartment, stepping over the bag she already has waiting by the door. Their kind don’t get invites. He’s forgetting that, maybe unlearning what he should already know. It’s dangerous.

“I trained you.” He follows her, boots tracking mud and water onto her plush cream carpet. 

“If you want to call it that.” 

“And we…”

“Now _that_ ,” she turns back to him and makes a play at nonchalance by propping her hip against the kitchen counter. “That I always figured you remembered. Just assumed Odessa was payback.” 

“Payback? For… but we…” He looks so lost, but she’s not sure she wants to help him navigate the perilous terrain of their past.

“I have to say it does a lot for a girl’s confidence when a man goes through the sort of thing you have and _still_ remembers the night they spent together. I guess some scars never fade.”

_Oh, clever,_ she thinks as she tries not to focus too hard at that spot high inside his right thigh where she knows a huge knot of scar tissue must still live. 

He gives a small, firm nod, as if confirming what he thinks he knows. “I remember. You. Us. But everything else is…” His head comes up and his eyes are red and muddy, a little wide with worry. “You were so _young._ God, were you even-” 

With an irritated little sniff Natasha pushes away form the bench and stalks toward him on bare feet. She can’t quite meet his eyes as she speaks. “You’ve done some shitty things, Barnes. Some of them… I wouldn’t even blame the programming. But let me put your mind at ease: what happened that night was my choice. I was being sent to Berlin to _play nice_ with a contact of interest. I knew what that meant. Just figured that if it was going to happen, one way or another, I’d pick. So I picked.”

And what a child she’d been. Because the poor haunted man she’d chosen, the poor damaged husk of flesh and tremulous control hadn’t been ready for her any more than she’d been for him. But there was a part of her - there was _still_ a part of her - that burned with a bitter entitled anger and she hadn’t given two shits who she’d hurt in her quest to take charge of at least _one_ milestone in her life. She reaches out to trace a finger from the waistband of his damp track pants to mid thigh, finger dipping inward toward where she knows she’ll find the raised mess of that scar. 

“You’ve sinned enough. Let me own this one. God knows what they did you you after they found us… it’s on me.”

She knows sleep is beyond her now. It was probably beyond her before she even opened the door, but a girl could hope.

“Come to bed.” Suddenly she’s blinking, taken by surprise at her own words. Taken by surprised at how much she _wants_. 

“I can’t.” There’s confusion in his voice and now he’s blinking too, wet hair dripping down his face as he looks at her as if she’s betrayed him. As if he expected her to be an answer and instead she’s making demands.

“You said that then, too.” Natasha steps up to him, letting the rain and cold from his skin and clothes soak in to her, as if it could be diffused and lessened between the two of them.

“What changed my mind?” 

“I said ‘please’.”

He narrows his eyes, “And I just fell into bed?”

“Utility closet,” she admits, “But yes. I’m persuasive. 

He sweeps the hair back from his face and looks down at her, eyes warming as his free hand comes up to toy with the end of her ponytail. “Yeah, I’m beginning to see that.”

“So do I need to say ‘please’?” She’s a little shaky on her feet as she presses her breasts against his ribs, her fingertips slipping over his forearms as she moves.

“Please don’t.” His voice is hoarse as his arms twist beneath hers and he catches her hands.

They make a sombre little procession as she leads the way to her bedroom. She’ll lose the sleep, but she’ll gain choice. 

And this time when that great karmic thump comes for them, she’ll be ready and she’ll be strong and they’ll survive.

Probably.


	7. Safe House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt fill from typhoidmeri: Steve/Darcy or the Hawkeyes: sharing a bed trope. Cause it's m'favourite.

Darcy had, at one point or another, woken up in some peculiar places. Hospital, twice. Asgard, just the once. Mrs Vega’s azaleas, but she’d been 18 at the time.

And really, Darcy conceded as early morning sunlight tinted the room, this time the peculiar part wasn't the ‘where’ (she was, thankfully, still in her own bed) but the ‘who’. 

It could have been Thor, the shoulders were right, the skin just tawny enough. Even the hair was the right colour, if the wrong cut. But it had been months since she’d seen Thor and why would he be at her apartment and not Jane’s? No, this wasn’t the big guy. Didn’t smell right, not like a storm over the lake during summer. This guy, Darcy shuffled a little closer and gave a delicate sniff, reeked of gasoline, sweat and the faintest sickly smack of blood. Closer inspection showed a mottled pattern of bruising forming along one side of his ribs.

She slowly drew her hand out from beneath the comforter and tried to push her hair more firmly out of her face. Waking up next to a sleeping man was new for her… well, at least one she didn’t _know_. The expanse of his back was impressive, so much so that she’d have to get onto her knees and probably wake the guy to lean over an get a peek at his face. Was that something she really wanted to do? Was waking her, albeit injured, uninvited bedfellow the best course of action here? Darcy chewed her lip as she shuffled backward, ass-first toward her side of the bed, intent on a smooth and steady escape.

It was a steady move, if an awkward one, one foot blindly peeking out from beneath the covers dangling in mid air as she sought the floor. Cold morning air met her toes and-

A firm hand clamped about her wrist and yanked her back into the bed as the once impressive and now terrifying bulk of her overnight visitor settled over her. His knee jammed between her thighs, fingers tightened painfully around her wrist and his spare hand came up to grip her throat in an obvious threat. He was banged up, lip and nose bloodied, right temple bruised and even if he hadn’t borne his injuries so obviously she could see his distress clearly in the haze of his eyes. Big, blue, Captain America eyes.

_Well, fu-_

His grip tightened and his chest moved rapidly its stilted adrenaline-fuelled breaths. Darcy’s own anxiety suddenly eclipsed the ‘who’ as her own hands came up to grip at his wrists. Her fingers wouldn’t fit around them, so instead her too short nails raked at his skin as she desperately tried to form words and bucked ineffectively beneath him.

“P-p…ple-” her plea tapered off into a small scream, contained in the band of his hands, loud in her own ears and maybe just enough to reach his.

“Who. Are. You?” His hands pulsed tighter with each word, the confusion and fear still very much present in his eyes.

Darcy’s mind proved that her survival instinct wasn’t about to kick in as it instead mused sadly that she was about to die in her most loved place: her bed.

Her head began to swim and black seeped in at the edges of her vision, like the world’s shittiest Instagram filter.

This was not, she thought with no small amount of resignation, how she’d imagined finding Captain America in her bed would play out…

She blinked back tears and-

The weight lifted from her torso, the overwhelming smell of gas and human distress dwindled as her vision cleared and she scrambled up against her headboard in time to watch Captain… no, Steve Rogers, back into a wall. He wasn’t a superhero in that moment, just a hurt and confused man.

“Wha-?” she croaked, her voice broken and her throat aching.

“Who are you?” he looked her over, eyes clearer but face and body stiff from his injuries.

“I’m Darcy. We haven’t met but I’m a friend of Thor’s. This is my home.” She hugged her knees to her chest.

“Thor-” One hand, knuckles bloodied, came up to grip at the ends of his hair as he drew in a few steadying breaths. “I wasn’t… I was in bad shape last night. Thor said this was a safe house. I just… I just came here.”

Thor, Darcy decided, was absolutely off her Christmas card list.

“Well,” Darcy gave a slow nod, “It is _my_ house. And it _is_ safe.” Steve’s shoulders relaxed a little as he regarded her with something that looked heartbreakingly like hope. Then, his shoulders slumped and he looked down at his hands and then to where she was curled against the headboard. She knew that he was thinking of how he had just attacked her. Honestly, _she’d_ be thinking of it for a damn long time too. Still, he needed the rest more than she needed the apology. Darcy uncurled her legs and made a show of primly pulling her comforter back up over them, she gave a quick nod toward her bathroom. “But you have to shower if you want back in the bed.”

“Darcy, I’m so-”

“Gross and sweaty. Shower. Shower _twice_. Use the lemony shampoo.” The lemon one was the good stuff Jane had bought for her birthday (or, more accurately, she had bought for Jane to give to her on her birthday). It always made her feel better.

He stayed planted at the far ed of her bedroom, shuffling from foot to foot. “I can leave,” he murmured, “I’m healed up enough now.”

“ _Sho-wer_ ,” this time she jabbed her finger in the right direction, “Then bed.”


End file.
